Gallows Hill

by Lois Duncan

  “I’m sure they’ll make an exception for you,” Rosemary said. “Especially when they find out how active you were in the drama club at your old school. Ted will talk to the sponsor if you feel awkward doing it.”

  “I don’t want Ted pulling strings for me,” Sarah said. “I put my name on the sign-up sheet and got turned down. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of the story.”

  Leaving her mother to continue her culinary activities, she carried her books down the hall to her bedroom. Although it was close to the size of her room in Ventura, it seemed much smaller because of the extra bed. Her beloved, double-size waterbed was stored in the garage along with most of their other belongings until such time as her mother and Ted got married and bought a house. “After we’re married” was her mother’s favorite phrase these days, as though the date of the wedding were firmly set. Until it took place—if indeed it ever did take place—and the “nice big house with four bedrooms” became a reality, the tiny room off the kitchen was allocated to Brian, and Sarah’s room was also Kyra’s on weekends or whenever else she decided she wanted to sleep over. Even on nights when Sarah had the room to herself, it didn’t feel like it belonged to her, with Kyra’s bed positioned across from her own and two whole drawers of the bureau assigned to Kyra, even though she kept nothing there except pajamas.

  Sarah shut the door and dumped her books on her desk, pausing as she did so to switch on her CD player. As the soothing strains of woodwinds and wind chimes filled the room, she threw herself down on her bed and closed her eyes. The remainder of the afternoon stretched drearily before her. Back home she had been involved in so many activities, what with club meetings, play rehearsals, beach parties, and trips to the mall, that the days had never been long enough to get everything done. Here she had nothing to occupy her time except schoolwork, which took a minimum of effort, since Pine Crest High was not as advanced as her school in California. Perhaps she should look into finding an after-school job, she thought. It would be nice to have spending money of her own again. Now that Rosemary wasn’t working, cash was tight, and when Ted had offered to give Sarah an allowance, she had refused it. There was no way she was going to be indebted to Ted Thompson for anything more than she absolutely had to be.

  The irony of it was that if she had played her cards right, she could have kept her mother from meeting him. The complaint of a sore throat or even a bad headache would have done it. All she’d have had to do was say she didn’t feel well and Rosemary never would have left her to go to San Francisco. Still, there was no way she could have known what would happen there. For years her career-oriented mother had been attending educational conferences in the summer while Sarah was at camp or staying with one of her girlfriends, and she always had come home stimulated and revitalized, ready to plunge back into her teaching schedule in the fall.

  How could Sarah have guessed that this time it would be different? She couldn’t have, of course, and yet there had been something—she couldn’t exactly call it a premonition, but something.

  That “something” had caused her to wonder for a moment about her eyesight. It had happened the evening before her mother’s departure when she had passed by the open door of Rosemary’s bedroom and seen a flash of yellow in the mirror over the dresser. The room had been dimly illuminated by light from the hallway, and when Sarah stepped back to peer into it, she saw nothing more than the shadowy reflection of herself—a tall, slim girl with a mane of black hair, who was dressed in a white, sleeveless T-shirt and hot pink jogging shorts.

  It was odd, she had thought, and she felt disconcerted but not particularly concerned. She hoped this didn’t mean she was going to need glasses. She turned to start back down the hall, and saw it again—at the edge of her line of vision, a glimpse of something yellow. This time she entered the room and turned on the overhead lights, only to find nothing yellow anywhere in sight. It wasn’t until her mother returned from the conference and Sarah was chatting with her while she unpacked that she saw the full-skirted, sunflower-colored cocktail dress.

  “Is that new?” she asked.

  “I bought it in San Francisco,” Rosemary told her. “I didn’t pack the right clothes. I forgot to take something dressy to go out to dinner in.”

  “They wouldn’t let you into a restaurant in a suit?”

  “Sure, but who wants to go dancing in something tailored?” Her mother’s voice held a lilt that was almost girlish.

  “Dancing?” Sarah said slowly. “You went out dancing?”

  “There are all sorts of wonderful dance clubs in San Francisco.” Rosemary was facing the closet as she spoke, and the statement was tossed back over her shoulder in a careless manner, but when she turned from placing the yellow dress on a padded hanger, her face had a glow that made the words seem magical.

  “Who was this guy?” Sarah asked her.

  “His name’s Ted Thompson.”

  “An English teacher?”

  “Who else would a person meet at a convention of English teachers?”

  “Available?”

  She expected her mother to say, “Of course,” but instead she paused and then said hesitantly, “Well, sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “He and his wife are separated. They’re in the process of getting a divorce, but it hasn’t come through yet. He’s a very special man, so attractive, and unbelievably thoughtful. He said he’d call tonight to make sure I got home all right, can you imagine?”

  As if on cue the telephone rang.

  “I’ll get it!” Rosemary exclaimed, and went dashing to answer it. “Oh, hi!” Sarah heard her trill. “Yes, fine, it was a very smooth flight! … Nothing much, in fact we’ve just finished dinner. … We—my daughter and I—who did you think I meant? … No, I’m afraid I’ve had more than my quota of seafood in the past few evenings. Not that I didn’t love it, but Hamburger Helper is more the norm around here.” A pause and a giggle. “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” A longer pause. “Me too. … Yes, really. I can’t say it now, but I do. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then. Sleep well, Ted.”

  The receiver clicked back in place, and Rosemary sighed.

  After that Ted Thompson’s phone calls came on the dot of eight every evening. Then he arrived in person, and that was a shock. Far from the gorgeous, charming type that Sarah had been anticipating, her mother’s “boyfriend” (Rosemary’s term, not Sarah’s) turned out to be a humorless, square-jawed man with horn-rimmed glasses and a head of rust-colored hair that was streaked with gray. Sarah could not imagine what Rosemary saw in him. Widowed for over twelve years, her mother had attracted plenty of men, and if she had wanted to remarry she could certainly have done so. Instead she had never shown the slightest interest in anything more than casual dating and had seemed quite content to devote herself to motherhood and her teaching career.

  When Ted arrived in her life, that sensible, down-to-earth Rosemary vanished, to be replaced by a starry-eyed stranger who made senseless decisions. Although Ted started out sleeping on the sofa in the living room, by his third night there he was sharing the master bedroom. By the time the long week was over, it had already been decided that Rosemary would give notice at the school where she taught and that she and Sarah would follow him back to Missouri.

  Now, as she often did, Sarah blocked that memory from her consciousness and let herself pretend that the move hadn’t happened. It had all been a silly dream, and if she didn’t accept its validity, she was bound to wake up and find herself still in California, where the scents of summer lingered in the damp salt air of October and crimson hibiscus bloomed in front of their garden apartment. The cries of gulls would replace the harsh caws of crows. And the clouds would be puffy and white and blow in off the ocean like cotton balls, not dull, striated layers spread out like thin sheets of plastic against the sky behind Garrett Hill, whose pine-covered slopes gave the town of Pine Crest its name. When the phone rang, the calls would not be from Sheila, Ted’s soon-to-be ex-wife, w
hining about how lonely she was or begging Ted to come over and repair her dishwasher, but from longtime pals like Gillian or Ryan or Lindsay—or from Jon, who had been on the verge of being more than a “friend”—each one wanting to know if Sarah was free to party or to go to the beach or a movie or just out cruising.

  She was zipping along the beach road in the backseat of Ryan’s Jeep, with her head tipped back against Jon’s shoulder, roaring with laughter at one of his crazy surfing stories, when a knock at the bedroom door caused her eyes to fly open. To her surprise she discovered the afternoon was over. The CD had long since played itself out, and the room was heavy with silence and bathed in the glow of softening twilight.

  “Sarah?” The voice was her mother’s. “Will you come out here, please? There’s something Ted and I feel we need to discuss with you.”

  “Okay,” Sarah called back. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Her voice was foggy with sleep, and her limbs felt leaden. She realized that she must have been sleeping like a dead thing if Ted had managed to come home and she hadn’t heard him. He always made a point of parking at the side of the house instead of in the driveway next to her mother’s car, under the ridiculous assumption that if his own car wasn’t visible from the street, nobody would suspect that he spent his nights there.

  When she dragged herself to her feet and went out to the living room, she found Ted on the sofa munching brownies, with a worried-looking Rosemary seated next to him. It was obvious to Sarah that they had been discussing her, for the moment she appeared, her mother said, “Don’t tell me you’ve been sleeping!”

  “All right, I won’t tell you,” Sarah said. “I’ll let you guess.”

  “Why? Are you sick?”

  “Since when is napping a crime?”

  “Excessive sleeping is a sign of depression,” Ted said in the classroom-lecture voice that Sarah found so irritating.

  “It’s also a sign of boredom,” Rosemary said, frowning. “Honey, it isn’t healthy for you to spend all your afternoons closed up in your bedroom. You’ve got to start getting involved in some after-school activities.”

  “I was thinking of maybe getting a job,” Sarah told her.

  “I’d rather see you out doing things with friends.”

  “What friends?” Sarah snapped. “All my friends are in California!”

  “There are plenty of nice kids here who could be your friends,” Ted said. “Kyra stopped by my office today with Eric Garrett. He told me he asked you to help with the Halloween Carnival and you turned him down.”

  “Why would he come to you about that?” asked Sarah.

  “He wanted my help in getting you to change your mind.”

  “Well, you can’t,” Sarah said. “I don’t want to run the fortune-telling booth.”

  “Are they going to have a fortune-teller?” Ted seemed surprised. “I would have expected the school board to have raised an objection.”

  “Well, I think it sounds like fun,” Rosemary said with enthusiasm. “Sarah, with your background in drama you could do that beautifully! And I know just the thing you can use for a crystal ball!”

  “I don’t want to be in the carnival,” Sarah said stubbornly. “Is this what you called me out here for, or is dinner ready?”

  “Your mother and I are going out to dinner,” Ted said. “It’s the four-month anniversary of the day we met.”

  “You’re more than welcome to come with us—” Rosemary began.

  “Another time,” Ted interrupted. “Tonight is a special occasion, a celebration for the two of us. There’s plenty of lasagna left over from last night’s dinner.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Sarah said sarcastically. “It would be a shame to let dried-out lasagna go to waste.”

  She turned on her heel and started back to her bedroom.

  “Sarah—” her mother called after her.

  “Rosie, don’t,” Ted said, cutting off the plea. “You know she’s only trying to wreck our evening. You mustn’t keep letting yourself be manipulated this way. Our kids have got to adjust to the fact that our relationship is important to us and that we have to be allowed time alone together to cement it.”

  You’re the one who’s wrecked things, Sarah longed to fire back at him. Rosemary and I had a great life back in Ventura!

  She choked back the words, however, and kept on walking, knowing that nothing she said would have any effect on him and not wanting to upset her mother any more than she had already. Once back in her bedroom, she left the door open to prevent any accusation from Ted that she was in there sulking. Turning on the light and taking a seat at the desk, she set about doing her algebra assignment.

  She could hear her mother and Ted getting ready for their night on the town, as if eating at a Pine Crest restaurant were something to get excited about. The toilet flushed, water gushed through the rattling shower pipes, and her mother’s hair dryer buzzed in harmony with Ted’s electric razor. Finally the preparations were completed, and Sarah could hear the two of them arguing out in the living room about whether or not her mother should come back to say good night and tell her how many minutes to microwave the lasagna. As always, Ted won. The front door shut with a firm click, and a few minutes later Ted’s car roared to life outside her window.

  When the sound of the engine was finally lost in the distance, Sarah felt a release from tension that left her as limp and exhausted as if the stress had been physical. She considered heating up dinner—it was past seven-thirty—but she didn’t feel hungry enough to make the effort.

  By now she had finished the algebra, and with no other class to study for except American history, which she liked to postpone until bedtime so that she could read herself to sleep, she was faced with an evening as empty as the afternoon had been. The only thing she could think of to do was watch television, which she seldom did these days since the TV set was in the living room and it made her uncomfortable to sit there with her mother and Ted cuddling on the sofa like teenagers.

  Now, with the house to herself, Sarah switched on the set and was flicking the dial in an aimless exploration of channels when the telephone rang. She was tempted not to answer it since she was sure it wasn’t for her, but when it kept on ringing persistently, she gave in.

  “Hello,” she said, her eyes on the flickering TV screen.

  “Is that you, Sarah?” The voice was all too familiar.

  “Your father’s not here,” Sarah said. “They’re out for the evening.”

  “I’m not calling Dad,” Kyra said. “You’re the one I want to talk to. Eric says the reason you won’t do the fortune-telling thing is because I’m part of it.”

  “He told you right,” Sarah said. “That shouldn’t surprise you. You and I aren’t exactly the best of friends.”

  “No, we’re not,” Kyra conceded. “But Eric and I are. We’ve known each other all our lives, and he’s a cool guy, and I don’t want to let him down. As for you and me, like it or not, we’re stuck with the disgusting fact that our parents are having a—a—” She paused, and then with obvious distaste forced out the word—“relationship. So what do you say we try to make the best of it?”

  For a moment Sarah was too surprised to respond. This overture was the last thing she had anticipated, and she couldn’t imagine what lay behind it.

  “It’ll get your mom off your back,” Kyra continued hurriedly, as if she was afraid Sarah was going to hang up on her. “She keeps bugging you about getting involved in school activities. I bet this would make her happy.”

  “What do you care if my mother’s happy?” Sarah asked suspiciously.

  “I don’t,” Kyra said. “But you do. And you know as well as I do that she’s not going to find much happiness here.”

  There was a moment of silence as Sarah struggled unsuccessfully to come up with an appropriate retort. As much as she hated to admit it, Kyra was right. Rosemary, who was obviously a victim of middle-age insanity, had sacrificed the career and frie
nds of a lifetime to follow her heart to a little town filled with narrow-minded bigots and take on the dubious role of a married man’s “lady friend.” Even if Ted did marry her, she would never be accepted here. The most she ever could hope for would be simply to be tolerated.

  As that thought took form in her mind, Sarah found herself struck by a feeling of such abrupt and intense foreboding that it was as if a black void had opened directly in front of her. In that instant of dislocation, as she fought to maintain her equilibrium and keep from tumbling headfirst into the pit of darkness, a voice seemed to shout directly into her right ear.

  “Guilty as charged!” it bellowed. “Away to Gallows Hill!”

  “No!” Sarah heard herself whimper. “I didn’t really mean it!”

  “Poor little Betty,” another voice said more gently. “The child is too frightened to remember.”

  Betty does remember, and she’s sorry! She never should have done it!

  For an instant the chasm gaped wider, and then the illusion was gone as if it had never been. With a gasp of relief, Sarah found herself safe again in the living room, where the only activity was on the television screen and the only voice was Kyra’s, tinny and tiny at the other end of the phone line.

  “You didn’t mean what?” it was asking. “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said. “I guess so. But for Rosemary’s sake, not yours. I couldn’t care less how ‘cool’ you think Eric Garrett is.”

  She replaced the receiver in slow motion and sat down on the sofa, feeling as if she had served a short stint in the Twilight Zone. Whatever had caused her to have such a bizarre hallucination? Gallows Hill, she thought, what a horrible name! Why did it seem so familiar, as did the name Betty? Had she read or heard about something like this on television?

  “That’s what I get for not eating,” she told herself shakily. “Low blood sugar can make people dizzy and disoriented.”

  It was not until she was standing at the microwave, watching the plate of lasagna rotate behind the glass, that she fully realized what she had agreed to.